The Throne of Grace

A few days back I mentioned a book called Pleasures Evermore by Sam Storms. Today I want to extract a couple of fairly lengthy quotes from that book.

In answer to the question, Where shall we go for grace?, Storms writes movingly about the "throne of grace":

Because it is a throne of grace, nothing is required of you but your need. Your ticket to the throne is not works but desperation. God doesn't want sacrifice or gifts or good intentions. He wants your helplessness in order that the sufficiency of His grace, at work on your behalf, might be magnified. This is a throne for the spiritually bankrupt to come and find the wealth of God's energizing presence. "This is not the throne of majesty which supports itself by the taxation of its subjects, but a throne which glorifies itself by streaming forth a fountain with floods of good things."

That quotation at the end is from Spurgeon by the way. I just want to say that I for one am betting my life on the grace of God. I'm betting that for those who believe it is never a throne of judgment, but always of reconciliation, peace, and empowerment for holy living. Storms again:

This grace for which we confidently and continuously ask doesn't merely show us what to do, it stimulates and sustains us in the doing. Grace doesn't merely point us in the way of holiness, it infused power that we might actually walk in that way. Grace is more than words of exhortation and cheers of encouragement. Grace is more than reasons to obey and arguments to persevere. Grace is power. Grace is energy. Grace is God at work in us to change us. Grace changes how we think, giving plausibility and sense to ideas once believed to be false. Grace changes how we feel, bringing joy in Jesus and revulsion for sin. Grace changes how we will, creating new and deeper desires for what we once found unappealing. Grace changes how we act, equipping and energizing the soul to do what we have failed to do so many times before.

If we are to have hope for holiness, we must have the heart-changing, mind-changing, will-changing work of divine grace that is sovereignly bestowed when heart-weak, mind-weak, will-weak people ask for it from the only place it may be found: the throne of grace.

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UPDATE: Blogger Matthew Hall has also been thinking about The Throne of Grace.